My Swing (Lihu)

[chris3putt]

Couple weight shift feel attempts. 6i in my hitting cage.

Plenty of other issues, but the focus is on the feeling with and without shift. 2 swings without, last swing with a little bit.

I like the way you are pre-setting your weight and hands forward at address. I assume you are trying to return to this position during impact? Seems to be working pretty well .

[Lihu]

I like the way you are pre-setting your weight and hands forward at address. I assume you are trying to return to this position during impact? Seems to be working pretty well:-) .

Just one baby step at a time. Still a long way to go. Thanks.

[Lihu]

First full practice round in about a month, and it was really bad.

Brookside Course 1 Blues (Par 72: 6700 yards): 95:49/46 (PRACTICE)

3 triples, 2 doubles, 10 bogeys, 3 pars. Played like crap. My timing is way off on my approach shots, I hit fat, thin and everything in between. I couldn't keep my tee shots out of the trees. To top it off, my short game didn't really come back until the 14th hole. The 15th hole I kept hooking my 3i back into the trees, after my "perfect" tee shot went straight and long into them. Took 3 shots to get on the green. All but 3 holes were near green experiences (10 yards) with only one GIR the entire round (missed 3 by a yard). The other two misses were because my tee shots hit trees or something. Putts were a horrific at 41.

Considering this is the course I played a month ago from 400 yards longer and shot 9 strokes better, this was pretty horrific. It was so bad that it doesn't even affect my good scores, but if I could up my handicap by 2 strokes I would before joining the club this January.

I'll need to play 9/18 every morning for the rest of the week. I was getting little snippets of decent shots, but enough of them in a row, plus my short game was really crappy today. Many near green situations ended with bogey to triple.

First I need to get rid of my hooks with my irons. Stop topping my hybrid, and stop hitting so low on the face of my driver. The good shots went about 240-260 yards today, but the bad ones went high and hit low on the face (1/2" from the bottom) barely 200-220 yards. No slices, but my timing and setup are probably totally off. I'm also playing with the loft. I tried values from 9 degrees to 11.5 degrees. The best drives today were using 9 degree loft.

Brookside Course 1 Gold (Par 72: 7100 yards): 92 44/48

Putting was better at 38, but now my drives were horrible. I even played another 8 holes on course 2 in an attempt to work out my drives, unsuccessfully. The best angle seems to still be 9 degrees. I need to figure out what I am doing wrong and maybe use an impact bag. Irons hae a tiny glimmer of hope. I nailed a quite a few greens from as far away as 190 yards, but did not get as many near greens as yesterday. As I hit hole 17 my performance degraded a lot with a barely made par 3 par then a triple on the last par 4 hole (468 yards) 4 to get on and a 3 putt. My first hole was pretty bad with a double too with no warmup up at 44 degrees F.

I can see this is going to take a couple weeks of constant play to get back into some semblance of shape. My lack of endurance is messing up the short game. Going to do some yoga (probably just stretching) tonight to loosen up the muscles. Most of the soreness is in the hips just above the pelvis.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

First full practice round in about a month, and it was really bad.

Brookside Course 1 Blues (Par 72: 6700 yards): 95:49/46 (PRACTICE)

3 triples, 2 doubles, 10 bogeys, 3 pars. Played like crap. My timing is way off on my approach shots, I hit fat, thin and everything in between. I couldn't keep my tee shots out of the trees. To top it off, my short game didn't really come back until the 14th hole. The 15th hole I kept hooking my 3i back into the trees, after my "perfect" tee shot went straight and long into them. Took 3 shots to get on the green. All but 3 holes were near green experiences (10 yards) with only one GIR the entire round (missed 3 by a yard). The other two misses were because my tee shots hit trees or something. Putts were a horrific at 41.

Considering this is the course I played a month ago from 400 yards longer and shot 9 strokes better, this was pretty horrific. It was so bad that it doesn't even affect my good scores, but if I could up my handicap by 2 strokes I would before joining the club this January.

I'll need to play 9/18 every morning for the rest of the week. I was getting little snippets of decent shots, but enough of them in a row, plus my short game was really crappy today. Many near green situations ended with bogey to triple.

First I need to get rid of my hooks with my irons. Stop topping my hybrid, and stop hitting so low on the face of my driver. The good shots went about 240-260 yards today, but the bad ones went high and hit low on the face (1/2" from the bottom) barely 200-220 yards. No slices, but my timing and setup are probably totally off. I'm also playing with the loft. I tried values from 9 degrees to 11.5 degrees. The best drives today were using 9 degree loft.

Brookside Course 1 Gold (Par 72: 7100 yards): 92 44/48

Putting was better at 38, but now my drives were horrible. I even played another 8 holes on course 2 in an attempt to work out my drives, unsuccessfully. The best angle seems to still be 9 degrees. I need to figure out what I am doing wrong and maybe use an impact bag. Irons hae a tiny glimmer of hope. I nailed a quite a few greens from as far away as 190 yards, but did not get as many near greens as yesterday. As I hit hole 17 my performance degraded a lot with a barely made par 3 par then a triple on the last par 4 hole (468 yards) 4 to get on and a 3 putt. My first hole was pretty bad with a double too with no warmup up at 44 degrees F.

I can see this is going to take a couple weeks of constant play to get back into some semblance of shape. My lack of endurance is messing up the short game. Going to do some yoga (probably just stretching) tonight to loosen up the muscles. Most of the soreness is in the hips just above the pelvis.

Same course Back 9. Didn't really keep score as I was practicing. I finally had some time to try the mirthful 4 ball pitch attempts.

The highlight of the day was getting the 13th hole par 3 green 202 yards away with a 3i. Drives much were better than yesterday. So, I am probably going to attempt another non-practice round tomorrow morning. Highlight hole was the 18th with a driver/Apex UT was 20 yards short of the green 468 yards away. Not quite driver/iron, but getting closer to the greens.

I feel that I can reach all the holes on a 6100-6200 yard course with driver/iron.

Evaluating my swing by "feel" this morning, I think I am at my maximum distances. The distances seemed to support my assertion that I can potentially average 240 yard drives and 200 yard 3i in the current conditions. I am hoping I can gain 20 yards with both driver and iron combination in the summer so that I can get to my hoped for average maximum distance of 440 yards driver/iron. Theoretically, I can get 250 yards + 200 yards at some point in time? Maybe with much better mechanics, I can consistently get to 430-440 yards?

[chris3putt]

12.8-13.6 handicap range. Gained a lot more confidence off the tee and got rid of my slice with the Cobra graphite shaft club. Weaned myself off of steel shafted X100 drivers (lost 70 grams of shaft weight and 30 grams of head weight in the form of lead tape), and gained an instant 30-50 yards. Now, I just need to be able to hit my irons longer and higher. Injured myself and was not able to really put weight shift and bend at the hips enough. My head tilts back a little, but it seems like I can get it back just before impact. The improvement from 13.6 to 12.8 came the last 4 rounds, where my putting was a tiny bit better, and my confidence with my approach shots improved. Despite the fact that I am using KBS Tour Xstiff MP-32 and trying to use a driving iron Apex UT 21 degree with a KBS C-Taper X irons, I am shooting lower. I parred my first 9 hole round with a 35 (bogey offset a birdie). Not an ace, but it sure felt good after doing it.

You do realize that you've just disqualified yourself from the "bogey only" golfer thread?

[Lihu]

[QUOTE]  [COLOR=181818] 12.8-13.6 handicap range. Gained a lot more confidence off the tee and got rid of my slice with the Cobra graphite shaft club. Weaned myself off of steel shafted X100 drivers (lost 70 grams of shaft weight and 30 grams of head weight in the form of lead tape), and gained an instant 30-50 yards. Now, I just need to be able to hit my irons longer and higher. Injured myself and was not able to really put weight shift and bend at the hips enough. My head tilts back a little, but it seems like I can get it back just before impact. The improvement from 13.6 to 12.8 came the last 4 rounds, where my putting was a tiny bit better, and my confidence with my approach shots improved. Despite the fact that I am using KBS Tour Xstiff MP-32 and trying to use a driving iron Apex UT 21 degree with a KBS C-Taper X irons, I am shooting lower. I parred my first 9 hole round with a 35 (bogey offset a birdie). Not an ace, but it sure felt good after doing it.[/COLOR] [/QUOTE] You do realize that you've just disqualified yourself from the "bogey only" golfer thread?:-P

Nope, my last two rounds. :-( Well, even when I can start playing "well" again, I'll still be shooting more bogey. Once a bogey, always a bogey I guess. :-D

[Lihu]

Chickened out of a regular round before I got to the tee box. I felt kind of "weak" when making some warmup swings before even getting on the tee box. Played 18 holes in 2.5 hours at 7228 yards (the new gold tee markers https://www.americangolf.com/public-courses/los-angeles/brookside-golf-club). They're really far back. Unfortunately, I was only driving about 230-240 yards today. Got a few good ones out there, but I couldn't rotate like I did yesterday. Plus, it was around 58F for the first 15 holes or so.

Maybe every other day I hit shorter?

On the last 6 holes I played (behind people pacing themselves for a "relaxing" 5-6 hour round), I decided to hit multiple balls. My driver dispersion is pretty good at 235 yards (25 yards on 8 shots). My 3i is also about 25 yards from 185 yards, the carry is only about 175 right now. I hit onto a large wide green I sometimes use for testing my iron dispersions (fixed all my pitch marks and more). I'll have to remember that when I take the "Trackman Combine Test" for the "180 yard) distance. My new Apex UT carries about 190 yards, and I can't take off 5 yards reliably. I'd rather go hotter with the 3i. Maybe I should take the Combine test this spring after a few more mechanics adjustments with Mike. Plus with my planned shaft changes, I am probably going to see different distances.

Two things I am going to do this winter season:

1) Start using my CG Tour blades with the R300 flex shafts. I need to get them bent 2 degrees flat from their current +2 degree lie setup.

2) Look seriously at the R15 driver R flex Fujikura shaft. It feels really light when I swing it.

I'm also going to change my 21 degree hybrid back to the stock Matrix S flex shaft, and also my new Apex UT with a stock S flex shaft.

[Lihu]

Thinking about the following equipment updates:

Adams A70 Putter

TM Rac 60 wedge

TM Rac 52 wedge

Cleveland CG Tour 3-P DG R300 with more modern lofts (This is also only temporary)

Callaway Apex UT KBS C-Taper S 21 degrees

TM Burner 2.0 19 degree (meas.) hybrid matrix S stock shaft

TM R15 R Flex Fujikura

also considering Ping G30 (U-4) with stock S flex, or Mizuno JPX-850 (G-4) R300

I am still planning on using blades while I am developing my swing. This is so I will know immediately when I am doing something wrong. The plan is to migrate to properly fitted GI/SGI clubs. I happen to like Ping and Mizuno finally made a forged club normal lefties can hit.

I also like the R15. This might be my first purchase depending upon the deals I can get. Deal or not, it's really enticing. The SLDR is harder to hit well. My son can hit the SLDR 260 yards because his swing is grooved pretty well, and he has a more consistent swing speed. His Titleist D2 seems to be working pretty well for him, though.

[No Mulligans]

Couple weight shift feel attempts. 6i in my hitting cage.

Plenty of other issues, but the focus is on the feeling with and without shift. 2 swings without, last swing with a little bit.

Nice Cage, sounds like you're hitting real balls.  I'm jealous.

Good looking swing to my eye.  One think I'd like to comment on is there is something about the tempo that looks rather abrupt.  I'm wondering if that leads to a lot of strains on the body and possible injury.

Perhaps you could smooth it out a bit.

FWIW, I'm a bit reluctant to comment, your obviously doing much better than me.

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

Couple weight shift feel attempts. 6i in my hitting cage.

Plenty of other issues, but the focus is on the feeling with and without shift. 2 swings without, last swing with a little bit.

Nice Cage, sounds like you're hitting real balls.  I'm jealous.

Good looking swing to my eye.  One think I'd like to comment on is there is something about the tempo that looks rather abrupt.  I'm wondering if that leads to a lot of strains on the body and possible injury.

Perhaps you could smooth it out a bit.

Yes, they are real balls (The remainder of my Snake Eyes and some of the non-ProV1/x balls I find on the course.

Thanks, but my elbows are still separating. It's definitely work in progress, apparently it takes a long time to develop any kind of swing.

Yeah, I agree that I look a little too abrupt. That's definitely something to look at.

[Lihu]

Well this explains why my playing has been so crappy for the last week. When I take a break off golf like 3 weeks, this last time, my old habits come back.

Let's see if I can fix this myself with the 9-3 drills before my lesson with Mike next week.

This also explains why I had such a loss in distance with the driver. I'm going to go back and re-evaluate my driver and the R15 on the launch monitors after fixing this crap.

Lots of work to do.

EDIT: It was bad before too, but I probably made compensations over the last two months playing the course to make it "work".

[Lihu]

I'm going to entitle this phase of my swing "Going from worse to bad. . .", at least that's the hope.

Did some hip turn drills (in early morning) before this round. Here are my first attempts at turning the hips first (Lost my balance on the first couple tries). I did roughly quarter to half speed swings with this drill. I put an alignment rod on a bungee cord around my hip. The idea is to see that the rod is all the way to the right by the time I feel the impact. I did some pure hip turning to hit a ladder while trying to keep my head steady for about 15 minutes prior to these swings.

These are two rounds (18 and 9 hole this morning) I played while trying to apply the drills:

My distances were still not that far, because was hitting balls from 6:00am to 9:30am, got some breakfast and joined @hacker101 his son and father in law for a round at Santa Anita. The main thing is I was trying to keep the feel from the drill as I made every shot. It cost me a lot of fat shots.

Santa Anita Blues 6480 yards, 91: 46/45

A lot of 3 putts killed my score. Mostly had near greens, just missed a few. 5 GIR.

Trying out my swing changes.

Sore muscles waking up, but stretched them out a bit.

Brookside Course 1 6711 yards: 45 (Practice)

The scoring was pretty horrendous, but I feel like my swing is getting more grooved. I was able to clear the hips a bit more than before. My drives were going longer even though I was not hitting the center of the face. My irons are getting back to their pre-vacation-from-golf-distances. Lots of near greens. I overshot a par 3 from the closer tees and it rolled on the cart path 30-40 yards past the green, and under hit the 468 yard par 4 by about 40 yards due to a fat shot with the Apex UT.

I am also pre-turning my hips on chip shots, and am getting more control over my chips even for flop shots. Working on getting more spin again.

Did some hip clearing drills yesterday evening. All my hip muscles are really sore from hitting 600 balls over the weekend trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. Plan on some more.

I need to work on finding the bottom of my swing again to stop fat and thin shots, and get more hip turn first action.

The hip turn motion is starting to get natural again. Going to do a lot more drills after work.

I am hoping to get some weight shift back into this swing before next week when I meet with Mike.

More practice and video to come. . .

[Lihu]

The three things I want to fix this week:

1) hip turn

2) maintaining my upper body "lag" to fix my A3 position where the club face is getting in front of my hands too soon

3) start getting some weight shift again

Probably in that order. I'll need to review some of my past lessons for the drills I used to fix them.

[Lihu]

The three things I want to fix this week:

1) hip turn

2) maintaining my upper body "lag" to fix my A3 position where the club face is getting in front of my hands too soon

3) start getting some weight shift again

Probably in that order. I'll need to review some of my past lessons for the drills I used to fix them.

Reviewed some of the drills. I need to keep my left elbow closer to my body. Kind of brushing against my waist.

[chris3putt]

The three things I want to fix this week:

1) hip turn

2) maintaining my upper body "lag" to fix my A3 position where the club face is getting in front of my hands too soon

3) start getting some weight shift again

Probably in that order. I'll need to review some of my past lessons for the drills I used to fix them.

At the risk of suggesting what you already know...................

1. Which one is the priority?

2. What is the simple, specific drill to address it? ("Hip turn" is too vague)

3. It may take longer than a week.............

[Lihu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lihu

The three things I want to fix this week:

1) hip turn

2) maintaining my upper body "lag" to fix my A3 position where the club face is getting in front of my hands too soon

3) start getting some weight shift again

Probably in that order. I'll need to review some of my past lessons for the drills I used to fix them.

At the risk of suggesting what you already know...................

1. Which one is the priority?

2. What is the simple, specific drill to address it?("Hip turn" is too vague)

3. It may take longer than a week.............

In order of what I think makes the most sense:

1)

Hip turn means that I want to start my swing with my lower body. That is at the top of my swing, the downswing should be initiated by my lower body. I've been initiating after my layoff from golf and some injuries from my shoulders. You can see by the lag in my hip movement after my upper body movement. The last two rounds and three days, I have been working on rectifying this situation. I am trying to power my swing from the lower body, and not the upper body. The specific drill to address this problem is using the rod to amplify the relative hip motion, and my swing thoughts are to move the tip of the rod to a fixed position before I hear the sound of the impact. The longer the delay between the stick reaching that point relative to the sound of the impact, the more successful I was at doing what I wanted.

2)

The second priority is to get my elbow to "rub" my torso from A3 to A6. This is to make sure that the club stays behind my hands. This will also eliminate the flipping that is costing me yardage. I think I do this on my good drives, and on my weak ones the elbow separates. At first, I thought that the issue was that I was not creating enough X factor in my upper body and that it should lag behind my lower body more, which also might be the case. But for now, I am doing this drill to help me achieve this goal, and am hoping this is only a sequencing issue and it will happen naturally when I fix the other parts of my swing.

3)

Putting weight shift, means simply applying more pressure to my rear foot without moving my spine and head. Trying to prevent the "sway", while still putting pressure on that foot. I did this a few times pretty successfully, using a lot of mirror work.

I agree that this could take more than a week. It is possible for me to get the individual components back into my swing in a week, as I have done this before about 2 months ago. Getting everything synchronized can take a year or more? There are many other things I need to work on as well, and I just want to at least be a bit better than last week.

BTW, I was a definitely too vague. For the longest time, no one really posted in this thread so I was simply making mental notes to myself. Kind of like a golfing diary. Thanks for taking an interest.

[Aflighter]

Well this explains why my playing has been so crappy for the last week. When I take a break off golf like 3 weeks, this last time, my old habits come back.

Let's see if I can fix this myself with the 9-3 drills before my lesson with Mike next week.

This also explains why I had such a loss in distance with the driver. I'm going to go back and re-evaluate my driver and the R15 on the launch monitors after fixing this crap.

Lots of work to do.

EDIT: It was bad before too, but I probably made compensations over the last two months playing the course to make it "work".

Wow LIHU,you seem to have a flat swing plane or maybe its just the view from back and below.

[Lihu]

Wow LIHU,you seem to have a flat swing plane or maybe its just the view from back and below.

Yeah, I noticed that and also cropping out the club at the top of the swing. I'll take a look at the flatness too, but after I get these other critical issues resolved. Thanks for the note.

EDIT: Very interesting reads: http://thesandtrap.com/t/7558/swing-plane

http://thesandtrap.com/t/32747/flat-swing-plane